Debate on the Address

Ben Bradley Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak on the first day of the Queen’s Speech debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley)—he is also my actual friend, regardless of the labels we have to give each other in this place—on moving the Loyal Address. His speech was an excellent example of his advocacy for his constituency. I always take great interest in his speeches because he happens to be my nan’s MP and she likes to hear about everything he says in the Chamber about Dronfield. I listened intently to him and I will feed back to her that he has done a fantastic job for his constituents today. She is probably watching Parliament TV; she is that kind of nan.

The key thing laid out at the start of the Gracious Speech is that we need to get Brexit done on 31 October. Despite the challenges put in the way of that by Opposition Members, nobody in my constituency, as far as I can tell, is desperate for more delay and uncertainty. Mansfield and Warsop voted 71% to leave. People tell me all the time that they are desperate to get the thing done and to get out, come what may. A handful of people tell me that they do not want to leave but would like a decision to be made. However, I have yet to meet on the doorstep in my constituency anyone who is desperate for a further six, nine or 12 months of delay and non-decision from this place over something that they decided three years ago.

The Queen’s Speech lays out the opportunities to make the most and take advantage of being outside the European Union. It seeks to legislate on agriculture, trade, financial services, immigration and lots of other issues that we can tackle, with our own interests at heart, outside the European Union. That is the right thing to do—to leave at the end of this month and to embark on a brave new era of global Britain, as it is often called, outside the European Union.

I want to focus on the domestic policies in the Queen’s Speech. As the co-chair, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Ms McVey), of the Blue Collar Conservatism group in Parliament, I want to celebrate in particular the focus on crime and policing, which is the issue that most regularly crosses my desk as the Member of Parliament for Mansfield and Warsop. We have pushed for more officers on the streets and for the police covenant, which seeks to protect and support the mental health of officers in the back room and behind the scenes. They are both now Government policy, which is fantastic. For those priorities to have come from my constituents is amazing. That is how our Blue Collar Conservatism movement works. We went out and asked people across the midlands and the north of the country what they wanted to see, and those issues were at the top of the agenda. Now they are Government policy and we are genuinely driving forward to improve people’s safety in our communities to make sure that we feel safer on the streets and in our homes than we do now. That is fantastic.

The focus on ensuring that sentencing truly fits the crime, particularly in the most serious violent and sexual offences, is hugely important to my constituents. Equally, I advocate the additional rights of and security for victims of crime, as outlined in the Gracious Speech. I think that its priorities are absolutely right. That is my own personal perspective, but they are also important for the country.

I am also pleased that education in schools continues to be at the top of our agenda. Before I came to this place, I wanted to be a teacher. I failed miserably, so I became a politician. Since I have been here, I have talked consistently about the need for more resources for our schools. I think that is the right thing to do. I personally thank the Prime Minister and the Education Secretary for announcing this week that every single school in my constituency will receive a significant increase in funding from September. In some cases, it will be as much as an 11% increase in per pupil funding, which will be fantastic. Those receiving the highest increases tend to be from the most deprived parts of my constituency, where the funding will be most effective and most needed.

Not only that, but there is £700 million in additional funding for special educational needs; in Mansfield and Warsop, we have a particularly high concentration of those additional challenges on our educational resources, which have impacted on school budgets in recent years. The extra breathing space will allow local schools to give those kids from deprived communities the experiences that they need from our education system—sport, art and school trips: the things that most of us in this place will probably have taken for granted, but that so many at schools across the country do not get to experience. That is hugely important.

Among the other Bills of note in the Queen’s Speech is the one relating to fairness in employment practices. That will also hit home with many of my constituents. A huge proportion of the workforce in my constituency are in retail, where wages are not high compared with the national average. That security and fairness in both work and pensions arrangements in today’s Queen’s Speech will be important.

I turn to the environment, which is important to us all. We have all recently been reminded of the challenge by the goings on outside this place. I, for one, believe that we can improve our environment in a positive way, through channelling and investing in modern, clean technologies, changing consumer habits and looking at the long-term routes to delivering on the zero carbon emissions target. We can do that without glueing ourselves to vehicles and telling all our children that we are doomed. There is a positive way forward to deliver on that agenda. As has been pointed out by many in this debate, we are doing that—we are among the leading countries in the world in seeking to improve and safeguard our environment for future generations.

I sat here listening to the Leader of the Opposition’s speech. It is difficult to say what a Labour Government would be for; I hear more about what they would be against. I surmise from his speech today that he is for shorter sentences for vicious criminals; for uncontrolled immigration; for more schoolkids going on strike; for a free ride on electoral fraud; for seizing private property, from private schools initially—the thin end of the wedge, which should put fear into the hearts of anybody who owns anything in this country; and for more Brexit delay and uncertainty. I hate to point out to the right hon. Gentleman that none of those things is going to go down particularly well in my constituency and many others like it across the country.

I am not entirely sure what the Leader of the Opposition is for, but I do know that this Parliament is fundamentally broken, as we have said many times over recent months. It has not been able to make a decision and, given a majority of minus 43, it is unlikely now to be able to make a decision on anything. At times, the atmosphere in this place has been absolutely toxic, particularly on Brexit. The reality is that a lot of things coming forward in the Queen’s Speech and the long-term issues that affect our country cannot be decided in this environment—they need long-term collaboration and cross-party working, which has been impossible in recent months.

Social care, for example, needs a long-term solution—we need to get together across the House and agree a plan. In recent years, such issues have been weaponised and turned into election issues. A number of Members have said that the Government have not come forward with any plans on social care. That is not true: we did during the 2017 election. A policy that said we would keep more of our money through a new form of funding was dubbed “the dementia tax”, shot down and made politically impossible, rather than there having been a sensible conversation about the pros and cons of the policy and how we might move it forward. Until we get Brexit done and we can change the atmosphere and have a new election and a new Parliament, which might be more conducive to those discussions, these things will be incredibly difficult. I hope that that will happen over the next few months.

I welcome the positive domestic agenda, which includes key priorities such as crime, schools and regional investment that are so important to my constituents in Mansfield and Warsop. I live for the day, post Brexit, when we can get on with delivering it.